In recent weeks, a small art exhibition in New York has raised thorny questions about the link between art and propaganda, creative ownership, and the possibility of judging a work of art irrespective of its creator. Ode to the Sea opened in October 2017 in the gallery of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The exhibition features 36 paintings, drawings and sculptures created in … Continue reading Prisoner Art from Guantánamo Bay
As the US presidential inauguration approaches, provoking revulsion and celebration in various quarters, an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s New York gallery is reminding visitors of a Cold War precedent for the current political turmoil. Philip Guston: Laughter in the Dark, Drawings from 1971 & 1975 is devoted to the American artist’s satirical images of Richard Nixon, whose controversial presidency was brought to a premature end … Continue reading Laughing at the President
Although the revolutions of 1989 are commemorated as marking the fall of the Soviet Union, many consider that the beginning of the end was 33 years earlier, in 1956. At the start of that year, on 25 February, new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered the ground-breaking speech “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet … Continue reading Drawing the Hungarian Revolution
The Tet Offensive was a defining moment in the Vietnam War. The series of surprise attacks were launched by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People’s Army against South Vietnam and their allies on 30 January 1968. During one of the largest military campaigns of the war, more than 80,000 soldiers attacked targets in over 100 towns and cities across Vietnam. Although the operation eventually … Continue reading Painting the Tet Offensive
Former US President and devoted Cold Warrior Richard Nixon is the inspiration behind a current exhibition in his home town of Yorba Linda, California. Involuntary Memories is a collection of large-scale pen and ink drawings by American artist Deborah Aschheim, woven together with text drawn from a series of oral interviews. Deborah Aschheim conducted the interviews and produced the illustrations during a 7-month residency at … Continue reading Exhibition of the Month: Involuntary Memories
ESPIONART has previously reported on the art collections of some unlikely American institutions, including the NASA Art Program, the Navy Art Collection and the DIA Military Art Collection. Another to add to that list is the United States Air Force Art Collection, which was created in 1950, just as the Cold War was beginning to heat up. Soon afterwards the USAF Art Program was also founded, … Continue reading The United States Air Force Art Collection
The atombic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 set the scene of the nuclear anxieties of the Cold War. Yet while the world would at moments come to the brink of nuclear war, the devastation wrought in Japan remains a unique tragedy. In May 1974 an old man walked in to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation studio in Hiroshima with … Continue reading Unforgettable Pictures of Hiroshima
From 5 to 10 June 1967 the Six-Day War briefly erupted between Israel and its neighbouring states of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. The skirmish was one of a series of Arab-Israeli conflicts that flared up during the first three decades of the Cold War, before a ceasefire after the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 ended large-scale hostilities. One of the Israeli soldiers bearing witness … Continue reading Drawing the Six-Day War
The death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin on 5 March 1953 marked the end of the most violent and wretched years in the history of the USSR. As his iron grip on the lives of millions of Soviet citizens was loosened, his successor Nikita Khrushchev ushered in a period of De-Stalinization. Soon after Stalin’s death, the French poet Louis Aragon invited fellow communist Pablo Picasso … Continue reading Stalin by Picasso (or Portrait of a Woman with Moustache)
With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on 27 January 1973, the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (representing groups including the infamous Viet Cong) officially agreed to end the Vietnam War. The treaty brought to an end America’s direct military involvement in the conflict, which had been the cause of much debate and criticism both abroad and at … Continue reading Vietnam War Art (via the British Library)
ESPIONART 